Chapter Notes
Warnings for this chapter: violence, non-consensual violence, death, emotional tortureThe woman's name was Penelope Atkins. The Doctor learned it as the Master announced it before a gathered crowd and the entire broadcast network of Archangel. Actually she learned it about three hours later while sitting in front of a television in the Master's bedroom. The camera cut to a small girl with her face buried in a stone-faced old woman's lap, presumably the woman's daughter and mother.
It was over in a matter of minutes. The drums beat just as they had in the Doctor's mind the night before. The muskets were high-powered rifles. The audience cheered with no real conviction, and the Doctor deduced it had something to do with the armed guards around the perimeter. Penelope raised her head as they prepared, and the Doctor held onto her relief that Penelope was at least clothed.
"I don't know why they always do that," the Master said, stroking the Doctor's leg, "standing so composed and defiant like it matters. Oh, here it comes."
The Doctor gritted her teeth against her urge to be sick. Penelope fell to the ground just as the Doctor had, only faster and less alive. The Doctor had chosen this for her, a public spectacle and fuel for the Master's fantasies.
"I agree, Doctor," the Master said. "It's too fast."
She took the Doctor's lack of an answer as agreement. "I'll work on dragging it out a bit."
The Doctor awoke alone in the Master's bed. Ribbons of light filtered through the electric blinds that the Master had left open a few inches. The Doctor's eyes felt bulbous and scabby from the times she'd awakened from her nightmares and cried. Either the Master hadn't noticed or ignored the quaking of the Doctor's body beside her. She'd slept through the night with a satisfied smirk. The Doctor dressed in just a shirt and pulled the doorknob. Locked. She sighed and slipped into the shower.
The Doctor tilted her head back into the warm water, letting some of it run down her nose until she gagged. If she filled her lungs with water, let her respiratory bypass take over for a while to keep her from regenerating, she could feign death just long enough for the Master to notice. She could curl up on the shower floor and wait, breathing shallow and slow. What would the Master think? She'd probably be pleased, depraved as she was. She might lay the Doctor out on her bed and surround her with flowers or bury her alive and sit a vigil until the Doctor forced herself out of the shallow grave. Smeared with dirt, they'd make love against the Doctor's tombstone.
The shower curtain whipped aside. The Doctor lurched over the side of the tub as the Master pulled her by the arm.
"Get dressed," the Master said, wrapping her in a thick towel. "I've got a surprise."
The Doctor dressed slowly, considering all the possible surprises the Master could have planned. Judging by the number of teeth the Master showed when she grinned, it was sure to be unpleasant.
"If you insist on moving like one, I can easily turn you back into an old lady," the Master said, interrupting the Doctor's dressing with a kiss on the neck.
"I think you enjoy me too much as I am," the Doctor answered.
A slight nausea lingered from the night before, made worse by the Master's breath on her face. Desire and revulsion churned through her brain, and the light bouncing from the mirrors around them seemed disorienting as halogens in an interrogation room.
"Ready," the Doctor said, buttoning one button on her coat.
"Ah-ah, not yet. You need one more accessory." The Master reached into an inner pocket and paused. "Turn around. On your knees."
The Doctor turned. The sharp tone of the Master's voice erased some of the revulsion. She dropped to the ground and waited. The Master rustled through her jacket a moment, and then the Doctor felt something cold brush her neck. The Master brought the chain around the front and looped it behind her.
"Took a little trip to a pet shop," the Master said. "And this collar just screamed 'Doctor'. I would say I hope it makes you scream 'Master', but I doubt you'll be able to scream much of anything."
She jerked it once, and the links cut into the Doctor's throat – a choke chain, a training collar for particularly difficult dogs. The Doctor supposed that suited her.
Rose had loved her with tenderness and inexperience, refreshing humanity after the horror of the Time War. The Master, though, knew the Doctor's body and mind. She could exploit the Doctor's deepest secrets for she herself had helped plant many of them. She brought the Doctor displays of power like bouquets and petty cruelties like terms of endearment.
"Up," the Master said. She jerked the chain again, and the Doctor stood.
The room in which the Master kept Jack Harkness dripped with the humidity of boilers and misty rainclouds that had been dissipated by the Valiant's giant engines. Jack dangled, her long hair pulled back into a stringy ponytail, between two posts. She lifted her head as the Doctor and the Master approached.
"You're looking good Doctor, very clean," she said, ending in a cough.
The Doctor saw an uneven pink line not quite healed under her chin, extending up each side of her jaw. She had hardly seen Jack the past few months, and when she did, Jack would greet her altogether too cheerfully, a grim reminder that the Doctor lived in relative luxury aboard the Valiant. With all her bravado and her 51st century libido, Jack gleaned no enjoyment from her experience with the Master. She clearly kept her sanity for the Doctor's sake.
"Thank you, J – " The Master pulled the Doctor's chain tight again.
"I get to do the talking now, Doctor. Two weeks ago, I tried an experiment on our lovely little freak here. In my infinite curiosity, I wanted to know whether she could re-grow whole limbs. And behold, she did not disappoint. No. She grew a new arm, a new leg, a new head. Messy business, that. Got a pile of rotting Jack we need to drop off sometime."
The Doctor had suspected what the Master was doing to Jack. Excitement had crackled through the Master's voice when she first learned of Jack's peculiar talent. Death's Champion and the Woman Who Couldn't Die.
"But you see, Jack did something really terrible last night. She tried to escape again. Destroyed two Toclafane and injured one of my men," the Master said, handing the Doctor's chain absently to a guard and stepping up to Jack.
Jack visibly recoiled at the Master's touch. The Master stroked Jack's chin as she continued: "I had to punish her for it, of course, but then I learned that you had encouraged it, my dear Doctor. Why would you do a thing like that?"
The Doctor's hearts pounded. Yes, she'd told Jack to find a way to escape at every opportunity. And why not? Jack had no part in this. If she hadn't followed the Doctor to the end of the universe, she would be picnicking in the Himalayas with the rest of Torchwood.
"Please, Master. Leave Jack out of it. She's no threat to you," the Doctor muttered.
"Oh, dear. It's not enough for you to have that Jones girl running around down there for you. You need your immortal champion to help her."
"Just send Jack away. Leave her on another planet, in another time. Just... don't." The Doctor looked at Jack who shook her head vigorously. Both of them knew what was coming. The Doctor dropped to her knees on the grated floor, feeling the chain pull tight and then loosen. "If you have to kill someone else, make it me."
The Master switched her gaze between them for a moment as if considering. Jack glared at the Doctor. Then the Master ran a hand through her hair and laughed.
"That's no fun at all!" she shrilled. "You'd just stay dead. Wouldn't want that."
"Penelope stayed dead."
"And so have all the other people I've ever killed. Notice how none of them has been you."
"Logopolis."
"Accident. And it's not like you stayed dead either." She draped an arm over Jack's shoulder. "I rather like this human idea of drawing and quartering. Fascinating, really, except they always died before the end. The shock and blood loss of disembowelment is too much for a human body, apparently. What about you, my favorite starfish?"
"I'm human, remember?" Jack said in her low American accent.
"Just enough for me to smell it."
"Master, no," the Doctor said softly.
"You're right. Not here," the Master said. "We need an audience." She turned to a passing worker. "How soon do we land?"
"Five minutes, Master."
"Long enough for passing a sentence, huh, Doctor?"
"Master...," the Doctor said. If she were the one in Jack's position, she might have leaned back in the rope restraints to soothe her lust. She would have welcomed the lurid details of how she would lose her own head because none of it would happen. The night would end not in the Doctor's lifeless body but in both her and the Master panting on the floor. Not so for Jack. She would endure, as she always did, and then she would die for a while. Jack would return in agony only to experience it again by new hands.
"Jack Harkness, once called 'Captain'," the Master said, pacing between them with a parchment scroll, "'for the crime of repeated escape attempts, you are hereby sentenced to be drawn from the airship Valiant upon a hurdle' – that's a sort of sled-thing – 'to the place of execution.' That would be Madison Square Garden. Seemed appropriate."
She walked around behind the Doctor and continued reading: "'There, you shall be hanged by the neck.'" The Master grasped the Doctor's chain and pulled until she got to her feet. "'And being still alive, cut down.' We'll skip the bit about privy members. 'Your bowels taken out and burned before you.'" She hooked an arm around the Doctor's stomach and pulled her in toward her. "That's the part where they tend to die. 'Your head severed from your body.' That's the part where I want you to die, Jack. 'And your body divided into four quarters to be disposed of at the Master's pleasure.' See, I replaced 'King' there. Rather clever of me. So, the question remains... which quarter will grow into the rest of you?"
"My favorite, obviously," Jack said.
"We'll see which that is."
The Master did none of the deed herself, preferring to prance the stage like a mad conductor. Most of the audience seemed to have been roused in the early morning; some still wore pajamas. A place of honor had been reserved for the Doctor to one side of the stage – a cushioned bench with shackles for her and room for the Master. She noticed a good number of people glowering at her and wondered what the Master's propaganda machine was churning into their homes.
Jack's black dress, streaked with dust from the streets, whipped around her as she walked up the steps. Children peered curiously from the audience, and the Toclafane shot a warning zap at a woman who covered her daughter's eyes. After reading Jack's sentence again, the Master took her seat beside the Doctor to watch Jack continue her ascent.
"Beautiful," the Master whispered. Indeed Jack radiated grace like a queen attending court. The Doctor wished she'd scream, willed her to jump into the audience and run, but she knew that would only prolong the moment. Perhaps the Master would do it twice then, in different cities.
The Master felt she had truly outdone herself on Jack's execution. Jack Harkness, always somewhat attractive for an Earth girl, looked positively gorgeous as she stood beneath the gallows. The Master carefully unbuttoned the center of the Doctor's shirt and crept a hand inside. If Jack became more attractive with a noose cinching around her neck, then the Doctor... the Doctor...
Jack obeyed the Master's command and lived. Naked and bloodied, she offered herself wordlessly for the coup de grâce. The Master had risen to taunt her several times throughout the ordeal and now rose again, leaving the Doctor disheveled in her seat.
The Master wiped the blood from Jack's gasping mouth. She wouldn't last much longer.
"Good girl," the Master said, brushing a hand along Jack's hairline.
"Do it now," she ordered.